Female Armor - Part 4

Updated progress on my armored, spy girl character (I need to find something better to call her)
Currently I am roughing out the armor shapes and starting some of the high poly work. The hard-surface armor pieces I am doing inside of MAX just because it is easier to control edges. I'm retopping her body in preparation to take it back into Zbrush to do all of the organic suit details. Once all of that is done, I'll bring everything back into MAX for a final retop of the model as a whole.

I've been trying to determine whether I want to retop the whole body (including the armor) as one solid mesh, just because when it comes time to skin that may cause certain armor plates to maybe bend with the rest of the body, whereas if I left the armor plates separate from the rest of the body, they could be skinning to the bones and more independently without bending or deforming. Although that way would rack up the poly count. DECISIONS!

I also must pay close attention to her silhouette as I think she may be a little too stocky at the moment. I hope to use the armor and some belts as a way to make her shape a bit more interesting. Her hair will be pretty important as well! I can't wait for that. I can't even predict the amount of planes I am going to use.

Recently I have been taking a break from the freelancing while I wait to hear about that projects status. Work has also bumped up to 50 hours a week instead of 40 which is going to limit my portfolio time all the more. Modeling work-related stuff for 10 hours straight only to come home and model more stuff is difficult. But THIS stuff is what I really want to do, so I can pull it off. :D

I just hope this all pays off.

I think it will.

Female Armor - Part 3

This past week we had a huge open house at work. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of work done on this character. I really don't know if I'm going to be able to finish her by the end of the month like I intended, and I don't really want to rush her because I want this model to be better than my last.

I did however manage to get a base sculpt for her body done. I'm currently going to retop it and then work on the armor pieces which will be done hard-surface in Max. I'm then going to throw everything back into Zbrush in order to add all of the organic details on the suit.

 My other goal on this model was to post its progress on a forum. I picked Game Artisans and have yet to receive any advice or criticism.

http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?p=374553#post374553

Boy & Dog

Finally finished these guys up. You can check them out in more detail here

 They both turned out pretty good. This is also the first time I've gotten Marmoset Toolbag to work out well for the final render. I plan on using it for the final shots of all my stuff from now on. The biggest problem I had with Marmoset in the past, I've found, is I've always forgotten to export my .obj meshes "with" their normals. Because of that, the models always showed up with unsightly seams that I couldn't get rid of. All I had to do was remember to check "normals" in the exporter and BAM, the models come in looking great!
Toolbag did crash numerous times however while trying to apply materials and stuff, but that's probably due to the size of materials I was using for this character (2048). I probably could have scaled those down to much smaller and it would have looked just as good.
Also! When working with Marmoset Toolbag, remember to flip your Green channel on your normal map. I learned that from working in Unity 3D and it's the same in Marmoset, so I'm assuming a lot of engines need that done as well. It's kind of a pain though because 3DS Max doesn't need the normals flipped so I basically have to created two separate maps.
This project is also the first time I've made one of those cool little turn table environment platforms for a character! I think it turned out alright. Making dead dandelions is hard though. They could have turned out better, but overall, I think it adds to the piece nicely! I plan on making one of these for all of my characters in the future.

And so starts the month of June! My goal of making a character a month is going pretty well, to my surprise. The boy and the dog took about a month (started on April 20th). The next project is the leather suited, spy girl! I mentioned in my last post that I'm planning to add some more armor type pieces to her suit. Here's some roughs I did the other day:

Dog face

 It's been about a month since I started my venture towards a new demo reel. The boy character is pretty much done and the dog is coming along nicely. I'm trying to make the dog a little cartoony to match the boy, but he's coming off a little goofy looking at the moment. I've been tweaking his proportions for a few days now, but I've decided to move forward and see how he looks after I get some textures going. Next stop though is unwrapping!!  I plan to have the dog done by this weekend and hopefully get both of these characters rigged by next week. The 3 day weekend this week will definitely come in handy!!

Next month will start a new character. Originally it was going to be the Green Ranger, but I have since switched up the roster and this girl will be next in line:

My portfolio is in dire need of some sex appeal, however I've feeling her to be a bit bland as is. I was digging Scarlett Johansson's hair in the newest Avengers movie, so I'm planning on having this character adopt that style of hair. I'm also thinking of adding some large shoulder armor and other ridiculous things to make her silhouette more extreme. On the other hand, I could just bulk up her legs with more  stuff and keep her top half slender. More concepts will be needed for sure.

Finally finished this thing

Ok, this is just a quick update. I finally finished this character. He's fully rigged and skinned. 6708 triangles with 100% hand painted textures.


So, now I can move on to more important models. Top priority now is to finish the mobile crane for Flaming Brain studios. I have the high poly mesh started and the low poly mesh is all unwrapped, so it shouldn't take too too long. After that, my portfolio needs props. I'm going to be making a lot of guns and probably some blades and shit too.

Also, after looking at my characters, I need a hot chick, and a big ugly monster. I technically have those already, but I need "good" ones. I also need some cartoony characters, but that stuff comes after props.

Let's see how much I can get done as fast as possible!

GO!